


The night is young and so are we

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Inspired by Art, M/M, Mutual Pining, would you guys hold hands already
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 08:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11077788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: They've been dancing around the desire for months, and now, sitting here in a city that reminds them a bit of home, Keith realizes proximity can be a deal-breaker for maintaining any semblance of collected and aloof to love.Or a small drabble written for @synnesai'samazing little fanart piece





	The night is young and so are we

There is something to be said for proximity. 

Some days, it’s the knife against a throat, making that perfect thin slit where blood just barely peeks through skin. All of it reminds him that there are things in life that would love nothing more than to watch him stumble forward towards his end. Years ago, it had been in the way smiles pulled tight, too tight to be called happy, feigning care and best intentions all while the strain of it threatened to break him. It was the hand that clamped down on his shoulder, the words that came hissed in a flourish of cigarette smoke about how the best a child could do was learn to behave for that was the thing upstanding adults were made of and isn’t that just what the world needed.

More upstanding adults.

“I never thought I would see anything like it again.”

Keith turns his head, studying the profile Shiro makes against a midnight sky. A near eternal night, or so the people of Artume apparently liked to joke. The reality is that their planet is steeped in dark and chill for the better part of a year, far longer than anything Keith had ever heard of back on Earth. They get the barest spray of sun’s light around midday, just enough to yawn by a native had laughed to them all that morning, and then it fades. No more brilliant than a match lit and left to burn itself out, having done nothing more than light up a life for a few sparkling seconds.

But even that loses its charm when it becomes repetition. Like watching Hope rise from Pandora’s box only to have it fall right back into its depths.

Flicker. Flash. Faded.

It’s hard to set one’s heart to things like that. 

But Shiro. . .there’s a smile on his lips that looks like it found home. It’s gentle, curving the corner of his mouth the way only memory can, and Keith thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen the man wear in his entire life. Puts this ache right into his soul, teaching him that yearning comes in a variety of forms and when left untended, grows thick and wild. He knows the only way out is by taking a machete to its constrictive vines and clearing a path right through the very depths of it.

To that same place hope sunk to, somewhere around the spot a heart typically beats. 

“I’ve seen pictures of places like this. New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo. . .but pictures aren’t really the same though, are they?” Keith laughs softly after that, understanding far too well how small his world had once been, how small it might still be.

Maybe it isn’t enough. He’s still just scratching at the surface of experience, even though the universe has thrown him through one gauntlet after another. But he can’t talk to Shiro of human cities large enough to be called their own worlds, can’t tell him what it means to walk their streets and get lost in the swell of a crowd. He knows only the empty of the desert, the very hollow of the Earth. 

He’s a land not meant to be lived in.

That’s what makes proximity such a damning thing sometimes. Because there are some nights, just like tonight, when he wants to slaughter the very distance between them. Some nights, the knife is in his hands, and he’s thinking about all the ways he can cut through the space dividing them. 

And proximity? It sits there, taunting him with everything he could have but doesn’t have the guts to take.

“You’re here now, aren't you?” 

Keith can feel Shiro’s gaze on him, steady, piercing. He could meet it. 

He could. 

Proximity says it could be that easy. 

Instead, he smiles and looks out over the skyline. The entire city is lit up with a multitude of colors. Pale yellow for the streetlights, the flickering blue of taillights, reds flashing warning, whites as clean as new souls sitting bright in office windows, while neon pinks and purples act as siren calls for various stores. All over the city dances with light, as if to throw laughter right back in the face of a planet’s dark fate: who needs a sun when we can make our own brilliance and burn by it instead?

“Yeah. . .I’m here,” Keith answers quietly. 

Shiro shifts his weight, drawing Keith’s attention once more to the space spanning between their figures. It’s no more than a hand’s reach away, with Shiro’s fingers planted firmly against the cool grey of the building’s surface beneath them. He could take those few inches, own them like it was owed to him. When he glances up, Keith finds Shiro looking at him again, and the fondness in his expression puts a stone right in his heart, making it impossibly hard to push the blood from chamber to chamber without some knot of pain forcing its way through as well. 

“It’s good to have you here.”

Heat torches his cheeks at those words. Keith looks away, fingers drumming nervously between them. The lift of one followed by another, all while his heart keeps trying to kick that stone out to some place less invasive.

There's one more thing about proximity. It begs. 

It begs for the chance to be made nothing, begs for the leap to be taken, begs for connection and meaning. Sometimes proximity pushes you to the point of making that mindless jump because there are arms waiting there to unfold for you. 

Fingertips slide forward, one slinking into the space between another until there is nothing left but the feel of Shiro beneath his skin. 

Keith exhales. “There’s no other place I’d want to be.”


End file.
